architecture – LODGINGhttp://lodgingmagazine.com
Official Publication of AHLA. LODGING covers hotel news and hospitality industry stories.Thu, 24 May 2018 15:41:38 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.6Checking in with Shosh Friedman of SB Architectshttp://lodgingmagazine.com/checking-shosh-friedman-sb-architects/
http://lodgingmagazine.com/checking-shosh-friedman-sb-architects/#respondFri, 13 Apr 2018 13:20:17 +0000http://lodgingmagazine.com/?p=37438Jorey “Shosh” Friedman has spent 23 years at SB Architects in Miami, entering the hotel space after designing a 350-key hotel in Hokkaido, Japan, for that company. She recently shared with LODGING how, after graduating with an architecture degree from Cornell, she grew into the hospitality space as SB Architects became one of the top hospitality design firms in the country, working with luxury brands such as Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, Auberge, and Kimpton. Can ...

]]>Jorey “Shosh” Friedman has spent 23 years at SB Architects in Miami, entering the hotel space after designing a 350-key hotel in Hokkaido, Japan, for that company. She recently shared with LODGING how, after graduating with an architecture degree from Cornell, she grew into the hospitality space as SB Architects became one of the top hospitality design firms in the country, working with luxury brands such as Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, Auberge, and Kimpton.

Can you describe your career journey?

I graduated with a B.Arch degree from Cornell University’s Architecture, Art, and Planning 5-year program. I grew up in a “project”-driven family where something creative was always happening. After graduation, I interned for H2L2, a sizable international firm headquartered in Philadelphia, Penn., before joining my current firm.

Among my mentors, I count my father, who first suggested I pursue architecture, and my mother, who was always supportive and hugely responsible for my sticking with this profession. Others were my Cornell professor Maria Romanach, who, as a successful woman in the field, also served as a role model in this largely male-dominated profession. From SB, my mentors include Richard Graham, Joe Andriola, and Scott Lee, who helped guide my approach to design—and specifically hospitality design—but also my advancement within the SB culture as a leader.

What is the focus of your position as vice president and principal at SB Architects?

My strength and focus has always been on design. However, as one of just two principals in the Miami office, I now find myself handling more of the business and cultural aspects of our firm than personally “laying down the ink” as I did before. I do, however, stay intimately engaged throughout the entire design process, offering assistance and mentorship to the younger staff every chance I get. As it was never my desire to be a solo practitioner, I get immense gratification seeing a project come alive as a shared process. I believe that architecture is the ultimate team sport. It really does take a village to get a building built, or to build a village.

How do you view the future of the hotel industry?

I think the future is looking very exciting, particularly from the architect’s point of view. As the trend leans towards experiential and immersive travel, it gives us as hospitality design architects the opportunity to fully indoctrinate ourselves in a culture to which we might not otherwise be exposed. We get to study all aspects of that particular place—how the traditional or regional architectural styles evolved, what the local materials are, what the core culture is like, and so on. We then get to take all of that information and reinterpret it into something that is current, meets market demands, incorporates newer building technologies and materials, and is unique, yet very much “of the place.”

The future of the hotel industry is evolving as our social culture evolves. Hotel lobbies are now social experiences, great WiFi is a must, and everywhere you go should have the potential to be an “Instagrammable moment.” But, regardless of the trends, it is and will always remain our goal to create a built environment that respects the culture, natural surroundings, and to ultimately enhance the guest experience.

Are there any special challenges that concern you?

From an industry perspective, keeping pace with technology is an ongoing challenge. Hotels and resorts take a substantial amount of time to conceive, design, and build. With technology moving so quickly, it is very difficult to predict what the latest and greatest technology will be in terms of operations and the guest experience once that hotel is actually up and running. Building a hotel that is able to sustain technological advances is still an ongoing challenge in this industry.

What do you like best about the hotel segment?

As an architect practicing in the hospitality segment, I love the diversity of design I am afforded—not just for between projects, but even within each project. Working for an international firm in the hospitality industry offers many unique opportunities. The fact that I travel to, and fully experience, places and cultures that I may not have ventured to on my own, is amazing. And then to be able to envision and create something that fits into that environment—and actually gets built—is mind-blowing.

]]>http://lodgingmagazine.com/checking-shosh-friedman-sb-architects/feed/0Radical Innovation’s 2017 Finalists for Game-Changing Hotel Designhttp://lodgingmagazine.com/radical-innovations-2017-finalists-for-game-changing-hotel-design/
http://lodgingmagazine.com/radical-innovations-2017-finalists-for-game-changing-hotel-design/#respondThu, 08 Jun 2017 13:00:52 +0000http://lodgingmagazine.com/?p=31286Radical Innovation, an annual competition that seeks game-changing ideas and concepts in hospitality design and operations, has recently announced its finalists for the competition’s 11th edition. Five finalists’ projects—the most in the competition’s history—will be presented to a live audience at the New Museum in New York on October 4 and a vote will determine the winner of the $10,000 grand prize. The runner-up will take home $5,000, and the student winner will receive a $1,500 prize and ...

]]>Radical Innovation, an annual competition that seeks game-changing ideas and concepts in hospitality design and operations, has recently announced its finalists for the competition’s 11th edition. Five finalists’ projects—the most in the competition’s history—will be presented to a live audience at the New Museum in New York on October 4 and a vote will determine the winner of the $10,000 grand prize. The runner-up will take home $5,000, and the student winner will receive a $1,500 prize and opportunity to pursue a scholarship at at University of Nevada, Las Vegas for a Master’s of Architecture Degree in Hospitality Design. Since its founding, Radical Innovation has awarded nearly $100,000 to progressive architectural and hospitality-minded thinkers.

This year, Radical Innovation received more than 65 international entries. A jury of hotel insiders reviewed the submissions and selected finalists based on the creativity and feasibility of their proposals. The three professional finalists chosen for this year’s event are Vertical Micro-Climate by Arno Matis Architecture, Living the Till by EoA, Inc., and Play Design Hotel’s namesake project. The even will also highlight student winner Brandan Siebrecht of UNLV and Caspar Schols of UK-based Architectural Association School of Architecture will receive an honorable mention for his Garden House design. More about each project is below.

“Living the Till” by EoA Inc., Coral Gables, Florida
A unique treetop hotel resort concept, “Living the Till,” involves a temporary nomadic structure, which allows for seasonal inhabitation in remote areas. Hovering 30 feet above the forest floor, the structure features a mesh platform supported by a series of cables installed by a team of climbers. Due to the abode’s verticality, there is minimal impact on the surrounding environment. Entirely suspended in nature, not only are the views spectacular, but this concept encourages a sustainable lifestyle as well with natural ventilation, composting methods, and access to natural resources.

“Play Design Hotel” by Play Design Hotel, Taipei, Taiwan
Conceived as an inhabitable design gallery, “Play Design Hotel” functions as both an incubator and living lab for local designers. The idea connects local designers to international travelers, who, in turn, are connected to the country’s culture through design. Interior furnishings, fixtures, and accessories selected from local brands that boast cultural significance or interesting narratives are carefully curated in the rooms for lodgers to experience firsthand.

“Hyperloop Hotel” by Brandan Siebrecht, Las Vegas, Nevada (Student Winner)
This innovative hotel concept uses sustainable, modular design in the form of shipping containers that double as traveling guest suites. Outfitted for luxury, the containers are customizable in terms of layout and design. Guests may travel and dock at one of 13 hotel destinations across the United States. The entire experience may be managed via a customized app.

“Garden House” by Caspar Schols, Eindhoven, Netherlands (Student Honorable Mention)
Built with Douglas wood, the Garden House contains an inner shell of double-glass and is topped by a steel roof. The outer shell is fully insulated, and the space is heated by a small, efficient Norwegian wood stove. These qualities combine to eliminate the need for artificial climate control, making the dynamic cabin adjustable to all seasons and climes—eliminating the waste of energy and dissolving the barrier between the indoors and outside.

Radical Innovations’ jury of hotel insiders includes: John Hardy, CEO of The John Hardy Group, the event’s producer; Michael Medzigian, CEO and director of Carey Watermark Investors; Jena Thornton, LEED AP and managing director of Eagle Rock Ventures; Simon Turner, former president of global development at Starwood Hotels; James Woods, head of WeLive at WeWork; Wing T. Chao, founding principal of Wing T. Chao Architect; and Claude Amar, president of the John Hardy Group International. The event has support from founding sponsor Global Allies, official partner Sleeper magazine and media partner Architizer. Innovator level sponsors include UNLV School of Architecture, Collins Brothers Worldwide, Martin Stringfellow Associates, DFL Legal, Accor Hotels, Beyer Brown, Son & Sons, and Hospitality Logistics International.

]]>http://lodgingmagazine.com/radical-innovations-2017-finalists-for-game-changing-hotel-design/feed/0Hotel Indigo Breaks Ground in New York’s Financial Districthttp://lodgingmagazine.com/hotel-indigo-breaks-ground-in-new-yorks-financial-district/
http://lodgingmagazine.com/hotel-indigo-breaks-ground-in-new-yorks-financial-district/#respondTue, 30 May 2017 12:48:57 +0000http://lodgingmagazine.com/?p=31109NEW YORK, N.Y.—Hotel Indigo, a brand of the InterContinental Hotels Group that was slated to break ground last fall, will do so in May 2017 at 8-10 Maiden Lane in New York’s Financial District. The 90,000-square-foot hotel designed by Gene Kaufman Architect (GKA) has 24 stories and 190 rooms as well as a ground-floor restaurant and rooftop bar. The hotel’s design mixes old and new, with an old-school masonry façade on the bottom third and ...

]]>NEW YORK, N.Y.—Hotel Indigo, a brand of the InterContinental Hotels Group that was slated to break ground last fall, will do so in May 2017 at 8-10 Maiden Lane in New York’s Financial District. The 90,000-square-foot hotel designed by Gene Kaufman Architect (GKA) has 24 stories and 190 rooms as well as a ground-floor restaurant and rooftop bar.

The hotel’s design mixes old and new, with an old-school masonry façade on the bottom third and sleek, modern glass for the upper stories. GKA’s interiors group designed the hotel’s inside, using muslin and other fabrics that call to mind Maiden Lane’s history as a place where 19th-century young women came to wash their clothes. A 19th-century-style curiosity, or wonder, cabinet in a small lounge off the lobby also recalls the area’s past.

A slim pole to the right of the building’s façade serves as a clock. As the day progresses, it slowly lights up until, at midnight, it is completely sheathed in light, which is then extinguished as the process begins anew.

Said GKA Founder and Principal Gene Kaufman, “Our goal in designing both the exterior and the interior of the Hotel Indigo was to craft a unique environment reflective of the area’s vitality, past, and present.”

]]>http://lodgingmagazine.com/hotel-indigo-breaks-ground-in-new-yorks-financial-district/feed/0Hotel Design in a ‘Glocal’ Contexthttp://lodgingmagazine.com/hotel-design-in-a-glocal-context/
http://lodgingmagazine.com/hotel-design-in-a-glocal-context/#respondFri, 31 Jul 2015 14:01:35 +0000http://lodgingmagazine.com/?p=19782Architecture evolves from the specific circumstances of a project: the location, program, climate, topography, and social and cultural influences, as well as the input of key people involved—from the owner, architect, and engineers to the authorities, contractors, and public. Exploring the places of the world extends thought into how we live and how future cities will be generated as we try to perceive what current social, economic, and technical developments will evolve to become. Today’s ...

]]>Architecture evolves from the specific circumstances of a project: the location, program, climate, topography, and social and cultural influences, as well as the input of key people involved—from the owner, architect, and engineers to the authorities, contractors, and public. Exploring the places of the world extends thought into how we live and how future cities will be generated as we try to perceive what current social, economic, and technical developments will evolve to become.

Today’s cities provide exceptional settings for observation. It is here that people, opportunities, and ideas converge to encourage innovation in design, technology, and thought.

Working on a global scale offers glimpses into ideas of differing cultures and their approach to urbanism and spaces at all scales. Observing, studying, and dissecting this knowledge increases our vocabulary of city form, building shapes, details, and technical advances to increase comfort and efficiency while reducing environmental impact, informing our work at a local scale.

Hotel Design at the Urban Level
Basic urban spatial typologies—the street, the square, the park, and the intersection—continue to connect us on an urban scale. The reinterpretation of these archetypal ideas, the way we compose them and how we advance, adopt, modify, and adjust these spaces for our time and situation, reinvigorates the places, architecture, and urbanism of today. To be connected to the time and place, new designs must contribute to the larger urban experience. Spaces become the great connectors, linking people socially and visually creating places where life happens. The hotel experience begins with its connection to the city and the neighborhood, not only in the physical sense but also in the sense of identity, celebrating the ethos of place.

Hotel Design at the Building Level
Hotel design is efficiency driven, with the double-loaded corridor model providing the greatest efficiency. The ability to use that efficiency to weave a strong sense of place through the composition massing and intertwining of public and private spaces provides a potent method to enhance guest experience. Reimagining this approach based on site, location, and climate can create a strong sense of place, a dynamic urban connection, and a powerful identity, resulting in a memorable, locally anchored brand. Hotel spaces such as the atrium, courtyard, and tower each present unique opportunities to define a place. Place-making can be static or dynamic, regular or irregular, hard or soft, open or closed, and on and on. How these spatial ideas are considered and then integrated into their specific locations—and how they evolve the idea of hospitality—result in distinct properties with real local character.

Hotel Design at the Detail Scale
Technology advancements continue to influence hotel design. The prefabrication of bathrooms or even entire guestroom modules enhances construction efficiencies and ensures consistency and quality throughout the design. The ability to wirelessly control shade, lighting, temperature, and view, while reducing mechanical loads is all very doable with today’s technology. Building enclosure technology and advances in material manufacturing allow for more transparent enclosure systems, maximizing view and the hotel guest’s connection to place on a visual level. These and other evolving technologies greatly impact hotel design and have the potential to create a new aesthetic.

Observe, Analyze, Study, Evaluate, Scheme, and Continue the Dialogue
Working globally presents opportunities to find the common factors that have the ability to elevate hotel design and result in special local places. By celebrating what makes each location unique, memorable hotel experiences are created where the guest can actually feel and participate in the local place.

About the AuthorGordon Beckman, AIA, is principal and design director at John Portman & Associates.

]]>http://lodgingmagazine.com/hotel-design-in-a-glocal-context/feed/0Designing Hotels for Tight Urban Marketshttp://lodgingmagazine.com/designing-hotels-for-tight-urban-markets/
http://lodgingmagazine.com/designing-hotels-for-tight-urban-markets/#respondThu, 06 Feb 2014 16:44:26 +0000http://lodgingmagazine.com/?p=9414Designing an urban hotel is a bit like playing Tetris; you have to put all the little pieces together just right. Just ask architect Rob Uhrin. He’s been squeezing hotels into tight spaces for 15 years. Of course, he’s worked on plenty of properties that spread out across acres of land, but it’s in the space-constricted urban projects that his expertise in hospitality design and brand knowledge comes into play. As a principal at Cooper ...

]]>Designing an urban hotel is a bit like playing Tetris; you have to put all the little pieces together just right. Just ask architect Rob Uhrin. He’s been squeezing hotels into tight spaces for 15 years. Of course, he’s worked on plenty of properties that spread out across acres of land, but it’s in the space-constricted urban projects that his expertise in hospitality design and brand knowledge comes into play. As a principal at Cooper Carry, Uhrin runs the hospitality practice in the firm’s Alexandria, Va., office. The studio has designed more than 40 new properties in the past decade.

“Our traditional market has been full-service hotels, but we’ve found lately that select-service hotels are filling more of our workload,” he says. “That’s because of the desirable business model [of select service] and the hotels themselves are exactly what works in many of the tight, mixed-use, urban environments.” He notes that urban markets require a certain amount of density to make the land values work. Where a particular site needs 625 keys, for example, to be profitable, developers don’t want to rely solely on one single hotel brand to occupy the spot. “There was a time before the recession where you could reach that density by building a hotel and adding another use to it—office, condo, or retail outlet,” Uhrin says. “But as time has shifted and those markets became less valuable, we saw hoteliers and developers grouping different brands together.”

This trend has taken off so much that developers are now putting dual-brand properties in smaller and smaller urban footprints. “If the location is desirable, the brand will bend over backward to get into that space,” Uhrin says. And there are times when combining two brands makes the economics of the system that much better. “For instance, we had a high-end four-pipe heating and cooling system that we used for both brands in the same project, and we spread the cost out over the entire property.”

When an architecture firm understands the brands well enough to pull apart the prototypes and put them back together, it can gain a lot of efficiencies. “If you can find an extra 10 keys just by being more efficient, that’s a huge help to the development team.” He says that the prototype usually isn’t as important as the brand standards. So instead of being hyper focused on the prototype, it’s often more useful to make sure all the identifiers are there and that the brand is happy with them. “It comes down to working within their vision,” Uhrin says. “For some brands it’s all about the room, for others it’s about the welcoming sequence of things that people see as they’re going to check in.

He points to one of Cooper Carry’s hotel projects in which he needed to put 200 keys into 10,000 square feet of space in the NoMa district of Washington, D.C. With the city’s stringent building height restrictions, the hotel could only go so high. The firm solved the problem by packing a select-service brand—Hyatt Place—in tight and making it as tall as possible to fill the buildable envelope. “In the process, we came up with some unique rooms and some unique ways to stack things together.” He’s quick to add that all of the things that make it difficult to develop these properties also bring value when it comes to higher barriers to entry. We’ll soon find out when the NoMa Hyatt Place opens this May.